Made with Love - Scaling a Small Beauty Brand on Amazon.com with Handmade Heroes

Selling our products on amazon.com in the US has opened up many doors and opportunities for us, the biggest of which being the access to customers who are looking for niche skincare products and who are willing to support indie brands. Granted, there is a lot of competition on amazon.com, but there are also a lot of customers, and an even greater demand for products, so it was helpful that we had already found and developed our niche as an all-natural, vegan-friendly, cruelty-free, Halal-certified skincare brand.

What I appreciate about Amazon Global Selling is that it provides a level playing field for all brands—it’s not just the big names that get visibility and exposure. Rather, it's the best quality products with good customer reviews that tend to get more attention.

In 2016, barely a year after we became an Amazon Global Seller, our signature Cocolicious Luscious Lip Scrub became one of the top 10 lip scrubs on amazon.com, and since 2019, it’s been number one². This was by far the biggest moment in running the business for me, as it proved that all of our hard work was actually paying off. In fact, what’s even crazier is that Hollywood celebrities have actually named our lip scrub as one of their favourite skincare products!

Aside from that, we hit seven-figure sales in 2020, and in 2022, our Drop Dead Gorgeous Dry Shampoo also became one of the top three dry shampoos on amazon.com.

Firstly, we paid close attention to our customers' feedback and suggestions. In the summer, our lip scrub was doing really well, and getting lots of good reviews, but as the seasons changed, so did our reviews—even though the formula of our lip scrub remained consistent, we noticed that customers were leaving comments stating how the products that they received had the consistency of butter, instead of the usual soft, sandy texture. This was when we realised that the coconut oil that we used in our original formula hardens at temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius, which means that in the US winters, our lip scrubs would not work as well.

We took these comments seriously and acted on them to enhance the quality and user experience of our lip scrub by swapping coconut oil out for jojoba oil instead, and since then, we’ve been getting more and more rave reviews. As of April 2023, we have about 19,000 reviews on our Cocolicious Luscious Lip Scrub product listing, with an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars. This has also contributed to our lip scrub gaining traction and new sales, because people tend to rely a lot on customer reviews when deciding on a product.

Of course, in our early days as an Amazon Global Seller, we found Amazon Vine very helpful as our new listings were given a boost in visibility thanks to the positive reviews we received from Vine reviewers, which in turn kick-started our sales on amazon.com.

Next, we made sure to highlight the vegan-friendly, all-natural, and cruelty-free nature of our products through brand storytelling. We are strong believers in building a brand centred around transparency and authenticity, and Amazon has enabled us to showcase this through brand storytelling tools like Enhanced Brand Content, and also by verifying our efforts at being carbon neutral via the Climate Friendly Pledge, which provides customers with a list of socially conscious brands that they can then choose to shop from.

We’ve noticed that consumers constantly seek out products that align with their values, and our commitment to ethical and sustainable practices has resonated with many of them and helped us build a loyal customer base. We also leveraged social media to showcase our efforts in sustainability, as well as the benefits and features of our lip scrub. This helped boost our brand awareness and attract new customers.

Yes, of course! Way back when we first started out, it was just my husband Adi and I. He would handle the business side of things, while I would handle the formulation and packaging. Now, we have a factory in Malaysia, and staff dedicated to making our products. We also have quality control staff, research and development staff, a marketing team, and a group of part-timers and freelancers.

Expanding and opening up our factory in Malaysia was actually one of the toughest parts of running the business, because it was such a huge change from our usual two-person team. We had to plan meticulously and coordinate a lot of different moving parts that comes with scaling up a business, all while ensuring the day-to-day operations of Handmade Heroes was running smoothly. Furthermore, with this new factory, we had to make sure that we were even more stringent with our quality checks and ethical standards, because there’s a lot more room for error now.

One of the ways in which we tackled this was by using Fulfillment by Amazon, which helped reduce our manpower hours by up to 100 hours per week. This freed up time for us to focus on perfecting our production processes, as Amazon would help us pack, ship, and deliver our products, as well as handle customer service and returns in North America.

On a macro level, our keyword strategy has been relatively consistent in that we always try to highlight how our products are vegan and all-natural, but on a micro-level, we’ve noticed that customers are becoming a lot more specific with their searches. These days, customers are a lot more educated and know exactly what they want—for instance, instead of searching for “natural skincare products”, they’d look up things like “bakuchiol serum” or “hyaluronic acid”.

This is why for product descriptions and ad targeting, we make sure to use a range of more specific keywords that include desired results (e.g. moisturizing, volumizing), pain points (e.g. dry lips), or active ingredients (e.g. bakuchiol, hyaluronic acid).

In fact, through our research, we’ve actually seen searches for “hyaluronic acid” triple since 2020, which is why we formulated and started selling our Snow Shroom Hyaluronic Acid Serum. It also happens to be my mum’s favourite!

When we first started selling on amazon.com, 100% of our Amazon advertising budget was channeled towards Sponsored Product ads, because we had yet to create a brand presence on Amazon, and were not yet known by US customers.

Now that we’ve grown as a brand and are more established now, we use a mixture of 10% Sponsored Brand ads and 90% Sponsored Product ads. The addition of Sponsored Brand ads allows more new customers to discover our brand, and for us to target competitor brands; while the Sponsored Product ads continue to drive sales conversion and create visibility for us among new customers.

We refreshed our brand’s Amazon storefront page completely and saw a 150% increase in sales via our storefront after. Previously, our storefront consisted of a lot of static images, but now, it has GIFs that feature our products being used, our brand story, a bit about our sustainability efforts, and spotlights how we’re vegan and cruelty-free. We also incorporated images, videos, and testimonials from real customers into our storefront page, and it’s overall just a lot more vibrant and colourful now.

We’ve also done A/B testing on our product images and titles to maximise conversions, and ended up seeing a 50% increase in sales. For our product images, we tested photographs of the same product against a white background, but shot at different angles, just to see which types of images are better-received on amazon.com.

All of our formulation is done in-house, so it does take some time—about one to two years—for new products to be developed, but we do have big plans to expand our range of products and create more flavour and scent variations to existing products as well. The goal, really, is to launch a full range of skincare, from head to toe. And also to get more number one bestsellers on amazon.com!

Additionally, I’d also like to continue empowering women through Handmade Heroes, as the brand continues to grow. Empowering women is very important to me, and I try to do my part by giving back to the community whenever I can. One way I do this is by returning to my alma mater to speak and share my experiences with young women, to give them a glimpse of what it's like to start a business and provide guidance where I can. I’ve also been invited to speak at various events to share my story, and I always try to highlight the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

In terms of our team composition, I’m happy to share that 70% of our team is female. We believe in creating a supportive and inclusive work environment, and we provide various opportunities for our team members to develop new skills and gain qualifications. For example, we offer overseas learning opportunities and encourage our team members to take part in training and development programs. We believe that investing in our team members is key to our success as a company, and I hope to continue on this path and have even more women join our team along the way.

One of the greatest things about being an entrepreneur is that while it still entails long working hours, I have the flexibility of switching my schedule around if the need arises. I also have the pleasure of spending lots of quality time with my daughter as she grows up, which is something that I will always be grateful for and never take for granted.